


Out of Madness, Genius

by dozmuffinxc



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dozmuffinxc/pseuds/dozmuffinxc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus encounters a peculiar child during an emergency visit to St. Bart's Hospital. Written as a response to a friend's challenge of "Snape and Sherlock" and the prompt "No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Madness, Genius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aalia7](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aalia7).



> "No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."  
> -Aristotle

Severus Snape was used to living in two worlds. As a child, he had been denied magic by his domineering father and his mother, a witch of no mean talent, had done nothing to cross her abusive husband. Magic had been the unspoken Other in their household, and the more he was denied it, the more he lusted after a life where his strange abilities were not beaten from him by his father’s cracked leather belt. Nevertheless, Severus had spent his early years in Muggle schools, been taken to Muggle doctors when he fell ill, and had had experience with only Muggle children until Lily Potter came along.

That did not, however, mean that Severus was at all comfortable entering back into the Muggle world that he had left behind almost 15 years previous. He would have refused the summons completely had it not been for the sake of that same mother who, while she would not stand up to her husband while he lived, did everything in her power to ensure her son received the magical education he desired once that husband died in a workplace accident the year that Severus turned 11. The owl had arrived in the early morning hours with a missive from a Healer whose name he did not recognize, a woman claiming to be a witch working at St. Bart’s Hospital in London who had been asked a favor by a patient. His mother, mired still in the Muggle world of her late husband, was dying. He had put in his notice with the Headmaster and set up a special Floo connection within the hour.

The Muggle clothes he had conjured up for his visit felt foreign and uncomfortable, and he felt an odd sense of betrayal to the magical world he had chosen, deprived as he was of his customary black robes. The trousers he had unearthed were form-fitting in a way that most wizards would have scoffed at, and the jumper he had chosen felt oppressive and made his skin itch. The sacrifice was rewarded by the smile on his mother’s wan, wrinkled face. Aged beyond her years from decades of deprivation and mistreatment, Eileen Prince was nevertheless an attractive woman; her midnight black hair, speckled with gray, had been carefully combed, and her dark eyes – a rich, mahogany brown – met Severus’ own black gaze with the confidence of someone who has accepted her fate and embraces it readily.

They had talked for the better part of an hour until Eileen, exhausted by the effort and newly dosed with morphine, had fallen asleep. Left to his own devices, Severus wandered the hospital wards haunted by memories of the dozens of visits he had made to similar establishments in his youth with his mother, bruised and barely coherent, who refused to sway from her story that she had “fallen down the stairs, so clumsy.”

He had found his way to the corner of what he vaguely registered to be a psychiatric ward when he felt it. The crackle of magic in the air was almost palpable, and for a moment, he wondered whether he in his distraction he had caused the phenomenon. Fingering his wand tucked discreetly in the pocket of his trousers, he assured himself that this was not the case. No: the source of the disturbance seemed to be coming from a room at the end of the hall. As he drew closer, he could feel the taint of agitation and fear pulsing in the odd, unfamiliar magical signature, and when he pushed open the door to the private room, he was caught unawares by the sight of a small child huddled on top of its hospital bed, glaring at the opposite wall with alarming intensity.

The child – a boy, Severus saw now, with an unruly mop of dark brown curls – looked up at the sound of the door being pushed open. He met the older man’s curious gaze with eyes that seemed to change color with the angle of his head; they were, at present, a stormy green-grey and were narrowed in childish menace.

“Go away,” the boy said, his voice absent of the usual childish petulance that Severus had grown accustomed to in his five years of teaching. His tone was flat, laced with something like hostility, but Severus sensed that there was an undercurrent of something more vulnerable lurking just below the surface.

“What’s your name,” Severus asked, leaning on the doorframe.

“You’re not a doctor,” the boy stated, his glare intensifying. “Why should I tell you anything?” 

“No,” Severus agreed, “I’m not. And you’re not an ordinary boy, are you?”

Several emotions flashed across the boy’s pale face in the span of a few short seconds. First (and briefest of all), confusion, followed immediately by suspicion tinged with distress; finally, anger gave way to a look of cool calculation that that seemed out of place in someone so young.

“You would know, wouldn’t you,” the boy said slowly, his eyes scanning Severus’ lanky frame. 

“What do you mean,” Severus said, equal parts amused and alarmed.

The boy hesitated for the space of a moment, unsure of whether to reveal himself to a stranger. As he began to speak, though, the words poured out of him as though they had been pent up inside for far too long.

“You’re uncomfortable in those clothes; you’ve probably just bought them, and you’re limping a little in those shoes - they’re two sizes too small for you. You’re trying to look normal, but it’s painfully obvious that you don’t belong here. The ink stains on your hand are from an old fashioned pen, maybe a quill, and you don’t have a mobile or anything at all technological, not even a watch. You’re not used to fluorescent lighting – it’s obvious from the strain around your eyes that you’ve been relying on candle light for years, and your complexion is clearly that of someone who rarely goes out-of-doors. I’d say you were a chemist, but the calluses on your fingers and the burn scars on your palms are clearly indicative of having worked with antiquated technology. And then there’s the stick in your pocket: you want to take it out, but you’re hiding it for some reason, but why is that if it’s only a stick?”

The question lingered in the air between them as he fell back into his brooding silence. During his peculiar monologue, the boy had drawn himself up in the bed and adopted a straight-backed, defensive posture. He seemed to be waiting for Severus’ reaction, his flashing eyes daring the stranger to deny anything he had just declared to be true.

“Merlin’s beard,” Snape breathed. It wasn’t a phrase he was accustomed to using, but nothing else seemed appropriate and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“Now,” the boy demanded, “you can either tell me who you are and what you want, or you can bloody well sod off.”

Perhaps it was the awkward way the obscenities tripped off the boy’s tongue or the general ludicrousness of a lad barely out of the nursery reading his entire history in his clothes, but Severus found he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. The chortles came hard and fast, and by the time he had himself under control, tears were streaming down his face. When he looked back again at the boy, he was alarmed to see that there were tears in his eyes, too, but decidedly not from mirth.

“Hey, now,” Severus said, stepping further into the room. The boy flinched as the stranger came closer, and Severus held his hands up in a gesture of conciliation. “I’m sorry to laugh. It’s just, you caught me by surprise. That – whatever it was you just did - was incredible.”

“You r-really think so,” the boy stammered, his throat tight from holding back tears. A small fist lifted to his face as he rubbed vigorously at his eyes.

“Undeniably wonderful,” Severus replied. “I’ve never known the like. How old are you?”

“Six,” the boy answered.

Severus let out his breath in a whistle and shook his head. 

“May I,” Severus asked, gesturing towards an empty chair beside the hospital bed. The request was met with a suspicious stare, but the boy nodded minutely and scooted further up the bed as Severus settled into his seat.

“What are you doing here,” the boy asked, true curiosity betraying the frown bowing his lips.

“I’m here visiting a patient,” Severus replied, not pausing to think of a suitable lie. “My mother’s ill, and they’re keeping her just upstairs for monitoring.”

“Oh,” the boy said. His blue-green eyes scanned Severus’ face form in appraisal and, finding there no expectation of sympathy, nodded once and settled back against the pillows.

“What about you,” Severus said. “Are you ill?”

“No,” the boy replied quickly, the startling hiss of venom in his voice. His small body stiffened as he fixed his eyes on the far wall and said, with feigned nonchalance, “They think I’m mad.”

“Who does,” Severus asked, his own body tensing in response to this unexpected reply. Years of his Muggle school fellows labeling him “the nutter’s boy,” “creep,” and “freak” turned his stomach to bile as he waited for an answer that he somehow knew would not be denied to him.

“My parents,” the boy replied. “Mummy always said that being different was fine, that I was like Mycroft and we were just smarter than the other boys. But she lied; it’s not fine. I’ve read the doctor’s files: ‘antisocial with a distinct lack of empathy,’ they said; ‘reckless disregard for consequences with a tendency towards sociopathy.’”

The boy stated all this with an air of rehearsed disdain, carefully pronouncing each clinical term with a familiarity that bespoke hours spent bent over psychology textbooks, but Severus knew pain when he saw it in another human being. He had known enough in his lifetime to recognize it in others.

“Well,” Severus said at last, “they sound like a bunch of dunderheads to me. I wouldn’t listen to a thing they say.”

Whatever response the boy had been expecting, this was clearly not it. He regarded Severus with wide-eyed astonishment until, at last, the smile that he was trying to suppress broke out on his face and he erupted in a fit of giggles that proved infectious. When they had both composed themselves, Severus was pleased to see that the smile had not left the boy’s face entirely.

“What’s your name,” Severus asked, giving way to his curiosity.

“William Sherlock Scott Holmes,” the boy replied, his sharp-eyed gaze daring Severus to comment on its peculiarity.

“Well, Sherlock,” Severus said – for it was this name that the boy had spoken with the most pride – “my name is Severus Tobias Snape, and it is a pleasure to meet you.” 

To Severus’ surprise, Sherlock held out a dainty hand in what was obviously meant to be a magnanimous gesture of acceptance. When Severus reached out to shake the proffered appendage, he was met with a shock of magical energy surging up to meet him through their joined hands. The untempered power seemed to be completely unintentional; Sherlock’s expression of serious contemplation did not waver in the slightest though Severus felt his breath catch in his throat.

 _No,_ he thought, definitely not normal. _Not normal at all._

“Mr. Snape,” a voice called from the doorway. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your mother is asking for you. It… it won’t be long now.”

Severus nodded to the nurse, and when he turned back to Sherlock, he caught a glimmer of regret in the boy’s eyes.

“You have to go,” he observed, the words a statement rather than question.

“Yes,” Severus replied, and he was surprised at the disappointment he felt in the necessary parting. “But,” he added, “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of each other, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock’s expression brightened considerably, and his dark curls bobbed as he rose up onto his knees in the bed.

“Do you promise?”

“Oh, yes,” Severus replied as he strode through the open doorway. Before he disappeared down the corridor, he paused and called over his shoulder, “Until next time, Sherlock Holmes.”

Severus caught only a momentary glimpse of the boy craning his neck to watch him turn the corner before he had passed out of sight altogether. The sight of a hopeful smile, hesitant and genuine, spreading across Sherlock’s face stayed with Severus as he rejoined his mother in her hospital room, and he found himself hoping that it wouldn’t be long before his path met again with that of the peculiar, lonely little boy with no clue as to what the future had in store.


End file.
